Microsoft / Activision Deal Approval Watch |OT| (MS/ABK close)

Do you believe the deal will be approved?

  • Yes, will be approved without changes.

    Votes: 221 24.9%

  • Yes, will be approved but with structural changes to ABK.

    Votes: 102 11.5%

  • Yes, will be approved but only with behavioral concessions.

    Votes: 262 29.6%

  • No, will not be approved.

    Votes: 301 34.0%
  • Total voters
    886
  • Poll closed .
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Not open for further replies.
bitbydeath said:
Congrats to all those who made money! 🎉
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I did. Bought in the low $70s long time ago and sold months ago at around $91-92. Bought a new MSI laptop with a 4070 gpu. Easy money. Only problem was I had to hold onto the stock for ages.

Amazingly, I bought in after the deal was announced, but it was so early the stock didn't even jump to $90. It was dabbling in the $75-80 range for ages. Then eventually hit the $80s, then dropped back to the $70s and then as time went on finally crept up to the $90-ish range.

People had a lot of time to make money on this stock.
 
James Sawyer Ford said:
Microsoft's repetitive, recycled strategy of halo, gears, and forza has deteriorated so now they had to find another franchise to acquire to try and keep the rehash cycle going.

Seriously wonder how long CoD will stay relevant going forward with MS owning them, unionization, and talent fleeing. Is the CoD brand really that beloved that it's resilient to these effects? I'm doubtful
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Lol. Call of Duty survived implosion of Infinity Ward (when Zampella and West left with majority of people), another implosion of Infinity Ward (after Infinite Warfare), implosion at Sledgehammer Games (after WWII) and departure of key people at Treyarch. They will be more than fine
 
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reksveks said:
Someone wanted the prohibition of MS acquiring the cloud rights back partially or fully for 10 years to be extended indefinitely but CMA said there was no precedence for doing that.
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I'm sure we don't know which company was that.
It probably starts with S and ends with Y...
...but I'm not 100% sure though :messenger_tears_of_joy:
 
bitbydeath said:
Now what are the chances of MS making Warcraft 4?

It's been about 20 years, we are long overdue!
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I personally don't care about Warcraft 4, because I'm not an RTS guy.
But thought of Starcraft Ghost revival with The Coalition at helm (after Gears 6 of course) would make me very excited.
 
Some suits definitely cashed in on this but I don't expect things to get fundamentally better over at ActiBlizz
MS is absolutely going to make everything XBox exclusive going forward and I hope it fails.
 
TransTrender said:
Some suits definitely cashed in on this but I don't expect things to get fundamentally better over at ActiBlizz
MS is absolutely going to make everything XBox exclusive going forward and I hope it fails.
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They fail already with Starfield and Forza. These games didn't move a needle. CoD isn't going to change since the game will be available on PS for still 10 years. Maybe the Xbox brand itself doesn't exist anymore before these 10 years.
 
StreetsofBeige said:
I did. Bought in the low $70s long time ago and sold months ago at around $91-92. Bought a new MSI laptop with a 4070 gpu. Easy money. Only problem was I had to hold onto the stock for ages.

Amazingly, I bought in after the deal was announced, but it was so early the stock didn't even jump to $90. It was dabbling in the $75-80 range for ages. Then eventually hit the $80s, then dropped back to the $70s and then as time went on finally crept up to the $90-ish range.

People had a lot of time to make money on this stock.
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If you had held NVDA during this period, you would have made quite a lot more money than that...


FJECZsT.png


Merger arbitrage can be fun, but it's rarely ever super profitable because you know the price you are paying and the market knows the acquisition closing price.

I've played merger arbitrage before, when Nvidia acquired a company named Mellanox a few years ago. I made about 30% as well, but the merger ended up also taking more than a year to close while Nvidia worked through the regulators getting approval for it. In the end, it wasn't worth it at all and I never bothered trying to play merger arbitrage ever again.
 
See ya in 10 years. Hope that everyone will stop with being overly modest and start barraging us with game announcements already.
 
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Pelta88 said:
Share halted means it's a done deal.

XBOX as a division has never been in a worse position. Their core support got a extended look behind the curtain and it's abundantly clear they've got more money than sense. Behind the scenes, it's an absolute catastrophe. The original goal was to remove content from their rival. The end result, ubisoft controls the right to the ip they spent 78 Billion on.

It's been hilarious.
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I guess you had to get that out before the thread dies down.
 
Pelta88 said:
Share halted means it's a done deal.

XBOX as a division has never been in a worse position. Their core support got a extended look behind the curtain and it's abundantly clear they've got more money than sense. Behind the scenes, it's an absolute catastrophe. The original goal was to remove content from their rival.
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'Catastrophe'?
behind the scenes, the goal's clearly been to drive GP subscribers and get a foothold into mobile. We've seen that across multiple emails.
They'll be celebrating the conclusion of the deal at Microsoft.

Pelta88 said:
The end result, ubisoft controls the right to the ip they spent 78 Billion on.
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Only for cloud streaming. You know, the market you're convinced is going nowhere. a right they were only too glad to concede to make the deal go through.

They're spending $70bn on an asset with $13bn cash on hand, that generates annual revenues of approx $9bn, with profits between $1.5 - $2bn yearly. None of that sounds grim at all, versus leaving the cash to sit in a bank, doing nothing.
 
dotnotbot said:
Activision and Blizzard are already mediocre crap. Their glory days are long gone. COD and stuff sells well but is there anything original and innovative? They're selling same games over and over.

Where even is any new IP from Blizzard? They used to release cool new stuff like Hearthstone and Overwatch not that long ago.
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Yeah let's make no mistake here, MS have paid 70bln for COD.

The rest was middle of the road crap already so chances are it becomes actual shite now.
 
James Sawyer Ford said:
Microsoft's repetitive, recycled strategy of halo, gears, and forza has deteriorated so now they had to find another franchise to acquire to try and keep the rehash cycle going.

Seriously wonder how long CoD will stay relevant going forward with MS owning them, unionization, and talent fleeing. Is the CoD brand really that beloved that it's resilient to these effects? I'm doubtful
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Strangely, no new Halo, Gears or Forza game was announced at this year's Xbox 'E3' show.

Why reach for outdated mantras?
 
Welp, here we go, finally.

Get those old titles on Game Pass fellas. Might actually encourage me to race through some old COD campaigns I missed.
 
OK good. Now post as many ABK games on GP please! GP is so good.

AV said:
Welp, here we go, finally.

Get those old titles on Game Pass fellas. Might actually encourage me to race through some old COD campaigns I missed.
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If you missed them, World at War SP is awesome. And MW II (2009) is too. Hopefully, all the oldies get put on including MW II SP remaster.
 
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Haha what pyrhric 'victory' for MS - the Xbox brand trashed and humiliated and MS's failures laid bare.

So when is CoD on game pass - do we cancel our pre orders lol?
 
Well it's finally over.
In the end I think the deal was adequately regulated.
The truly anticompetitive parts were the possibility of removing COD from competitors overnight and them becoming the only company with both the technical infrastructure and contents to establish a domination in the gaming cloud market in its infancy.
Those things now cannot happen thanks to regulation so what is left is a Gamepass boost with some games but at the price of 70 billions + wasting two years in a legal battle that exposed strategies, secrets and has tied their hands essentially conceding an other generation to their competitors.
 
Ozriel said:
Strangely, no new Halo, Gears or Forza game was announced at this year's Xbox 'E3' show.

Why reach for outdated mantras?
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Gears is in a good place, 5 was solid, Tactics it was a fresh game and even 4 it was not so bad,

New Forza has been a blast for my competitive racing sessions still lack of content and some bugs, Im still happy for the future of franchise, horizon should get a shake up for the next instalment.....

HALO is the one that really grinds my gears... Infinite multi is pretty good I guess, but I play Halo more for the single player....



People still rides on this 3 games for"Xbox haz no gamez" or always the same franchises ....
 
Godot25 said:
I personally don't care about Warcraft 4, because I'm not an RTS guy.
But thought of Starcraft Ghost revival with The Coalition at helm (after Gears 6 of course) would make me very excited.
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It's been a long while since we've had a really good one. C&C Generals was the last RTS I thought was really good.
 
Happy for those that wanted this to happen. It was a blast arguing about it though. I now know more about anti-trust sheninigans than I ever thought I would. lol

Greatest thread of all-time?

The Rock Yes GIF
 
I hope people are ready for Microsoft to put the Activision back catalogue on gamepass, and then charging people full price or offering a very small discount for the most recent entries

I would honestly be very surprised if COD MW3 is offered on gamepass day 1
 
Despite so many casualties it's been a wild and fun ride. This deal has made public so much information about this industry that almost felt like a good old E3 show.

Now gentlemen time to eat your share of crow
 
Congratulations to the Gamepass users who will be forking out extra for CoD either way. Imagine if the deal had failed, the same games would still be coming on Xbox's Ecosystem. Perish the thought.
 
Dick Jones said:
Congratulations to the Gamepass users who will be forking out extra for CoD either way. Imagine if the deal had failed, the same games would still be coming on Xbox's Ecosystem. Perish the thought.
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Dude now they can say Xbox owns Call of Duty when they are console warring. And they can speculate about singularity remake and Halo by sledgehammer or whatever mid studio is flipping burgers at ABK.

Candy crush with Ray tracing bro
 
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TrebleShot said:
Yeah let's make no mistake here, MS have paid 70bln for COD.

The rest was middle of the road crap already so chances are it becomes actual shite now.
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King and Blizzard alone make up a hefty portion of the value.

Take Two spent nearly $13bn acquiring Zynga. And King is slightly bigger.


Mephisto40 said:
I hope people are ready for Microsoft to put the Activision back catalogue on gamepass, and then charging people full price or offering a very small discount for the most recent entries
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I suspect you'll be disappointed. Day 1 GP releases from next year.


Mephisto40 said:
I would honestly be very surprised if COD MW3 is offered on gamepass day 1
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Duh. Sony deal already prevents this, and Activision has already confirmed it isn't coming to GP this year.
 
I wonder if this Acti X MS bought was the reason Jimbo left, i would lose the little respect i had for him if it's the case


Imagine depending on Activision, would be pathetic
 
So for those who've been really following it....

I know they've said that Diablo 4 and MW3 won't get added to GP right away, but has anything been said about the many older CoD games? About Crash, THPS, all of the way older stuff? I read the tweet by ABK about adding stuff sometime next year, but do they mean all of ABK content with that? With Bethesda they were super quick with adding games.
 
Elios83 said:
Well it's finally over.
In the end I think the deal was adequately regulated.
The truly anticompetitive parts were the possibility of removing COD from competitors overnight and them becoming the only company with both the technical infrastructure and contents to establish a domination in the gaming cloud market in its infancy.
Those things now cannot happen thanks to regulation so what is left is a Gamepass boost with some games but at the price of 70 billions + wasting two years in a legal battle that exposed strategies, secrets and has tied their hands essentially conceding an other generation to their competitors.
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Well they seem to have glossed over all the other tools MS has to manipulate that market. Has anyone ever had it in writing what MS would charge to ensure their ActiBliz games can appear on non-windows platforms? Has (or will there be) any regulation into Windows license cost manipulation for cloud 'competitors'?

To be honest I think maybe that the importance of ActiBliz content was maybe over played, but it is the general market manipulation that needs to be watched. I don't see how this deal with Ubisoft for cloud and the promises they've made, won't require ongoing management and oversight from the likes of the CMA, so in that case they have gone back on their initial beliefs and bent over for MS.

Will be interesting to see how the deal in general alters behaviour of console rivals and cloud giants in the future.

I think Gamepass will get an overhaul, maybe in time introducing a 3rd tier and first part exclusives will only be available day 1 in the highest tier which will be priced quite a bit higher. That way they can still say they are available on Gamepass day 1. The other tiers would maybe get them 6-12 months later. We will see.
 
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